


Half-Asleep Heart

by paperwar



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte
Genre: Angst, Asian Character, Bullying, Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 15:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mihashi's brain knows things are different now. He's just waiting for his heart to catch up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Asleep Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place vaguely near the beginning of the series. The title is from the Catie Curtis song "Just Getting By."

Sometimes Mihashi remembered what it used to be like. He'd startle awake at night with his hands flying up to hover protectively in front of his face. The room would be dark, of course. But it would feel even darker than usual. Like his half-asleep brain had translated the oppressive mood of his sleeping mind into literal darkness.

If he was lucky, it would take only a few seconds to jar himself fully awake. Sometimes it seemed much longer. It felt like emerging from a cave, the way the dream fell away around him: the slow realization that it was only another dream, a needless dream. That now things were different.

Sometimes, despite himself, he still didn't want them to be.

In those dark sleeping moments, half-memory, half-nightmare, he was back with his old team. During his time at Mihoshi, sometimes he would count, out of a morbid curiosity, how many words his teammates said to him during a day. Many of those words were hurtful, yes. Yet what ached bone-deep were the stark silences and the eking out of syllables in his direction. As if each sound required some reviled process to create. As if they had put some thought into expressing themselves to him, only when absolutely necessary, with the fewest words possible, each sharp and hard like a grudge. When the team could, they ignored him.

Seeing them happy should have made Mihashi so; they were his teammates, after all, and if nothing else, their happiness made it less likely they would vent ill-feeling on him. But it was almost worse; they shut him out of their joy with a collectiveness unspoken -- at least he thought it was unspoken -- but nevertheless complete.

Someone would master a technique in practice, and excitement would bubble up. Mihashi would cringe as the person effused about this new trick to everyone else. There were rarely any pointed looks in his direction, no blatant turning of backs. When things were going well, the team wouldn't waste that much emotional energy on him to his face. They simply pretended he wasn't there. Not in a childlike way, where they would check every few seconds to see if their target noticed. It was just that their gestures, their words, their laughter slid around him, past him.

As if Mihashi didn't exist.

His nightmares often consisted of having some great baseball emergency on the mound. Something ridiculous but terrifying, steeped in the nonsensical logic of dreams: he had to strike out the next batter or the player on deck would get mauled by a bear lurking outside the dugout for this purpose. And Mihashi would try to convey to his teammates, or at the very least, to Hatake, the desperateness of the situation. But no one behaved any differently in his dream than in the waking world. He would fall to his knees on the mound, weeping, begging Hatake to please help him, let him know how he could get through this, and the response would be complete silence. As if the other players had been replaced by statues, or had just evaporated.

Struggling his way back to consciousness, Mihashi would bolt upright, gasping. He'd repeat Abe's name, shorthand to his sleep-addled mind that things were different now. He had a catcher that promised to help him. People who occasionally seemed to understand him. They even seemed to like his pitching. He couldn't quite verbalize these things to himself, not even while fully awake; all he could manage was to whisper, "Remember Abe-kun," as a plea and a promise.

He felt better during the day. He knew the rest of the team thought he was overemotional and enigmatic and frustrating -- and he knew he was -- but he also knew he felt better. The world seemed brighter and more promising.

So he didn't quite understand -- and certainly didn't appreciate -- that his subconscious didn't notice the situation had changed. Especially when such dreams happened the night before a game, when he most needed his rest. Worst of all, he would jolt awake, realize what happened, and then start fretting: Abe was going to notice how tired Mihashi was and yell at him. And then Mihashi might even let down the team by being in such poor shape. Maybe he couldn't be a real ace, after all.

He would picture the runner on third, try holding his own hand to see if he could warm it up, but nothing seemed to tame the thoughts running in circles. He'd tangle himself in the blankets, trying to find a position that lulled him into sleep, until he managed, by some luck, to stumble into unconsciousness. As if sleep were a deep pool and he, fatigued, was staggering around the edge: when he fell in, it was soundless and total.

The alarm clock would screech at him all too soon, and he'd be exhausted but relieved that daytime, with its relative clarity, had reemerged. Soon he'd be back with his team, with his catcher.

His team. His catcher. Those words: maybe someday they would banish the nightmares.


End file.
